“I’m very happy to be in the final,” said Tsonga. “I already played in three finals here and won two. In French, we always say ‘never two without three’ so I hope I will do it.”

Tsonga and Simon have owned the Metz event, winning the title now five of the last six years. They each have two wins apiece.

In St. Petersburg, Milos Raonic seeks his first title since 2014 Washington as he takes on Joao Sousa. Raonic is currently No. 13 in the ATP Race and his push for the year-end London event starts Sunday with a much-needed victory.

Raonic beat Roberto Bautista Agut 6-2, 7-6(2) while Sousa stopped Dominic Thiem. Sousa’s quietly now made three ATP finals this year. For Raonic, he’s seeking his first indoor title in two years.

On the women’s tour, former No. 1 Jelena Jankovic wrapped up the Guangzhou title. And tomorrow the surging Belinda Bencic meets Agnieszka Radwanska for the Tokyo title.

Just 18, Bencic has impressively won 8 of 10 matches against Top 10 players this year, including a win last month over Serena Williams and today she beat former No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki 6-2, 6-4. And with a win over Radwanska she’ll crack the Top 10.

But Top 10 shouldn’t be the goal. She’s playing like someone who’s going to go far, far higher.

Well, didn’t get to see it. Maybe tennis channel had Jo v Giles Metz final on early this morning but I was dead asleep. Coverage of Tokyo was pretty good. ATP, not so much last week. Nothing at all from St. Peterburg.

Milos has a game that leaves me feeling quite cold,love Jo though whos very charismatic same with Gael would love to see both of them win a GS although it seems unlikely,Aggie too as she is beautiful to watch,but doesnt have any big weapons or a huge serve,anyway great fields next week on the ATP and WTA,and to think some people see it as a slow time tennis wise….

What I’ll say is that Milos does have a serve-bot aspect to him but watch him a little more, Gypsy. He’s interesting in few ways — very thoughtful and smart. He’s serious about developing his movement, ground game and was getting there but had some bad luck this past year with injuries. I like his composure on court – uses the meridian tapping on changeovers ;)

You are right about Aga but she’s also trying — her serve was very good in that final and her shot selection and defense brilliant – most importantly she’s confident and looking happy.

Love this time of year GG, Asian Swing will be fun — also Vienna has been upgraded to a 500, Basel, Paris, Stockholm… WTF, Davis Cup Final.

“Another thing mat4, when you do feel the need to chastise me would you do it in French, please? It’s so much easier on my poor ego.”

It really wasn’t my intention, nothing of the kind, it didn’t even crossed my mind. There were so many posts in that thread I don’t even remember whom I answered to.

Once I wrote that I missed a certain poster I liked very much, and nothing has changed, I am so happy he’s back, and I enjoy his posts. I am also happy he belongs to the same kind of circumspect and critical minds I do, and I just wanted to give some infos I have first hand.

I have good sources, and I travel in this part of the world all the time — that’s how I know. Not to reveal too much, I had a long conversation with Elena Guskova last week, when she came here. You can easily check who she is.

Then, I’m not even sure if you’re joking here. I hope you are.

And, about Cantat: it’s such a sad story — evil and good in one destiny. And a great poet singing his own fate, his life cheated in one single moment of drunkenness and drugs.

Peace? Love. Moving in the positive…
Thanks for links, mat4. Appreciate English on the screen but the French is so wonderful.
Other link sounded familiar because I search around for latin/caribbean fusion. Jehro rendition of Stevie Wonder’s Master Blaster.

Kinda not sure what you are referring to about the joking, mat4. It’s easy to get wires crossed sometimes on the interwebs but I did look up Elena Gluskova…read about her…can only imagine what an interesting source of information she would be.

Did find this on Tsipras – not sure why I thought he’d had a falling out with the Greek financial minister (who resigned? can’t remember his name) – they were in the same political party weren’t they?

jalep,
Tsipras was given ultimatum by EU to get read of Varoufakis, Varoufakis resigned to make life eaisier for Tsipras. Tsipras is nowhere near as left as he is portraying himself but Varoufakis was, extremely well educated (in England), smart and die hard socialist (you can say communist). That is my opinion, mat4 might not agree. Varoufakis was the man behind first negotiations with EU, not Tsipras.

If you wonder how I know about him, well he was the lecturer at University of Sydney for more than ten years (1989-2000) and has dual citizenship plus doughter here. Not that I studied but know few people that he was lecturing. This is what he says about himself (from Wiki):

“In truth, Karl Marx was responsible for framing my perspective of the world we live in, from my childhood to this day. It is not something that I volunteer to talk about in ‘polite society’ much these days because the very mention of the M-word switches audiences off.”

Well, I’m sure my Greek-American friend would disagree probably if I ran this by him (don’t discuss anything politically with him as a rule, wouldn’t want to ruin my chances for lamb and baklava) but I liked what I’d seen of Varoufakis — then, suddenly he was gone…but I can be wrong about people too, so…

jalep,
The problem with us from Balkans is that is very hard to find middle ground, we are either left or right, even at home father son relationship is the same, me and my father were on the opposite side of political spectrum, we couldn’t talk five minutes without having a fight (not physical) and my mother was UN peace keeping force. Long time after I left country and all that hell broke loose in Yugoslavia, he told my mather “My son was right”, but never told me that. I found that when I made it for his funeral after traveling 56 hours from Sydney to Belgrade, by plane, by car, by bus, by walk (Serbia was under sanctions), my mother told me.

EG is the head of the Section for Slavic studies of the Russian Academy, and her English wiki page is a minefield. She’s an extremely decent and educated person, who personally knows most of the Russian establishment.

She’s probably the most eminent expert for the Balkan crises in the East, and her informations correspond — except in some details — with mine.

@WB:

Tsipras… please don’t mention this… POS. It’s was a set-up, from the very beginning. You know, the Trojan horse?

WB, my mom was a Republican and dad was a Democrat – always voted completely opposite but never discussed politics with my mom because I sided, sort of with my Dad but he played the fence-sitting, peace-keeping moderate Democrat role.

Arrgh…it’s too depressing to think about the 2016 election. Tennis is a nice landscape of diversion, Wog Boy. And talking about Greeks makes me hungry! hahaha…

mat4 – I would not trust wiki for looking her up – unless I could read Russian. Went to RT and found some links to her; also found a link to online magazine (linked above) and an interview piece with her. Why I said, must be interesting to have such a source of information.

I do lamb shanks myself jalep, not as good as Greeks but my Lebanese says they excellent, his wife agrees, my wife doesn’t eat lamb, you can come over, it is only 24 hours or so flight, I’ll pick you up from the airport ;)
I am not American but something tells me that Clinton dinasty is moving back to Oval Office next year, it will be 16 years of Clinton’s in the office, not bad:)

I’m sure you do great lamb shanks, WB, and will be on my way regardless of who wins the election. Get ready for it. My hope is that wherever I go I can get a work permit and do what it takes to get my RN license transferred. Trump or someone like that wins and I’m outta here. But I better stop before a political rant starts. ;)

jalep,
I’ll see what can I do about your RN license, I know there is shortage of nurses, my Irish friends are moving to Australia by the end of the year and they both got same jobs here as in Ireland, she is a registered nurse and he is an ambulance officer, we’ll have that covered for you:)